Adams

HBO home video has announced one of the less intelligent TV-on-DVD moves in a while. They hold the rights to Get Smart (not to be confused with the crappy 1995 revival, which was just released on DVD) and licensed it to Time-Life, which produced a terrific complete-series box set only available via mail order. Now HBO is finally releasing the first season in retail stores… On August 5, almost two months after the release of the movie version. And without any of the extras that the Time-Life set has. That is, without the documentaries, interviews, or the separate commentaries by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry on the pilot episode.

A couple of DVD releases worth looking out for in the next couple of weeks:

Kirk Ellis, the writer of the John Adams miniseries, has an article in the New Republic on the liberties that he took with history — John Adams is shown doing things that never happened, saying things he never said, events are telescoped and rearranged — and why this is just part of the process of writing a good “historical” movie or show: